Professor Giacomin is cross-appointed in Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and therefore; supervises graduate research on rheology in Mechanical and Materials Engineering, as well as Chemical Engineering and Engineering Chemistry.

Professor Giacomin is President of the Canadian Society of Rheology and Editor-in-Chief of Physics of Fluids. He is the former President of The Society of Rheology. Giacomin has also served as Associate Editor for Business of the Journal of Rheology, the archival journal of The Society of Rheology. For nearly 20 years, Professor Giacomin directed the Rheology Research Center of the University of Wisconsin. Professor Giacomin is registered as a Professional Engineer in Ontario and Wisconsin. Professor Giacomin and his students have published more than 100 journal articles, on thermoforming, blow molding, plastic pipe extrusion, wire coating, sheet coating, fiber filled materials, sliding plate rheometry and on the nonlinear viscoelasticity of molten plastics and other complex fluids. His research has attracted industrial sponsorship from 3M, Clearlam, Curwood (Bemis), Dow Chemical, DuPont, IBM, Kimberly-Clark, Nordson/Extrusion Dies, Phillips 66, Placon, Plastics Ingenuity, Shell Development, Subzero and TriEnda.

Professor Giacomin's group explores the role played by rheology in polymer processing or in plastics manufacturing. This group develops rheometers for measuring the rheological properties of molten plastics. His laboratory is equipped with a special instrument for measuring nonlinear viscoelastic properties: a rotational rheometer with cone-plate partitioning. This is used to measure the shear stress and normal stress difference, light scattering, and dielectric responses of polymeric liquids in large-amplitude oscillatory shear flow (LAOS). His laboratory is also equipped with a contact angle goniometer for molten plastics.

With Professor Bird at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Giacomin is also exploring the rich and interesting relation between polymer molecular structure and rheology. Specifically, they use molecular models to derive the behavior of polymer molecules in large-amplitude oscillatory shear analytically, and from first principles.

Experimental and theoretical investigations on die-lip build-up (die drool) in extrusion and on die line formation are also underway. Here, Giacomin's group aims to explain the mysterious build-up of unwanted material on the open faces of extrusion dies. Die drool affects how often extrusion lines must be shut-down for die cleaning. The sliding plate rheometer is also used to explore wall slip in molten plastics, and its pivotal effect on processing. Specifically, Professor Giacomin's group is now exploring how wall slip affects extrusion flow instabilities. These matter because they govern the maximum throughput in extrusion.

Giacomin's group also studies polymer hardness and durometry. Using linear elastic indentation mechanics, we interpret the measured polymer hardness in terms of the Young's modulus. We apply the method to standardized indentation hardness measurements such as those conforming to ASTM D2240 or ASTM D2583.

Thermoforming is the deformation of flat plastics sheeting into thin complex shapes such as clear rigid packaging. We develop analytical solutions to sheet forming, focussing especially on the rates of deformation, and the stresses in the deforming sheets. We employ a transport phenomena approach to the mechanics of thermoforming. We also employ computational viscoelastic analysis software (POLYFLOW) for advanced studies of thermoforming and other plastics manufacturing problems, and MOLDEX 3D for the specific analysis of injection molding.

Professor Giacomin serves as a consultant to the polymer industry, and as an expert witness in patent, products liability and false claims litigation. Professor Giacomin has been named Professor of the French Academy of Sciences, and he holds the title of Honorary Associate Member of the Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics in Wales. He has been a Visiting Professor at Université de Sherbrooke, McGill University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, École des Mines de Paris (Sophia-Antipolis), the National University of Singapore, Chung Yuan University (Taiwan), the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan), the University of Crete, Shandong University, Peking University, Universidad de los Andes, and Shanghai University, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok. Professor Giacomin’s research is supported, in part, by the Canada Research Chairs program of the Government of Canada for the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Rheology, and also by the Discovery Grant program of the Government of Canada.

Last updated January 06, 2016

CHEE 412: Transport Phenomena in Chemical Engineering

CHEE 901: Principles and Applications of Polymer Rheology

CHEE 991: Introduction to the Processing and Rheology of Polymeric Materials